Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Unreported crime

Last Friday, as a local ward Councillor, I went to one of Charles Clarke's community meetings. Much talk from

the platform about crime levels in Norwich going down. ...But these areof course reported crime levels. Those in the audience at a meeting like thisare presumably more community-spirited than most residents - that's why they turned up.

But again and again, when asked, they said that they had NOT reported to thepolice (or to anyone) the crimes and ASB incidents they then related tous. . .

I suspect that crime levels are NOT going down, but may indeed begoing up - only REPORTED CRIME is going down.

It's true that people tend significantly to overestimate their risk of being victims of crime (this has a lot to

do with bad journalism). And it's true that, compared to many other parts of the world, Norwich is a very

safe place. But maybe if we were more realistic about how much crime is not reported these days, we would

not be so complacent about just how safe (or not) our streets and citizens are. There is a lot of crime and anti-social-behaviour

2 Comments:

But the point is: None of the worthies on the panel at the meeting in question saw this obvious truth. Charles Clarke kept on patting himself on the back for crime 'falling', even as audience-member after audience-member said that they had recently been a victim of crime and had not reported it (in fact, most of them seemed surprised at the very idea that they might have found it worth it bothering to report it).

Last Friday, as a local ward Councillor, I went to one of Charles Clarke's community meetings. Much talk from

the platform about crime levels in Norwich going down. ...But these areof course reported crime levels. Those in the audience at a meeting like thisare presumably more community-spirited than most residents - that's why they turned up.

But again and again, when asked, they said that they had NOT reported to thepolice (or to anyone) the crimes and ASB incidents they then related tous. . .

I suspect that crime levels are NOT going down, but may indeed begoing up - only REPORTED CRIME is going down.

It's true that people tend significantly to overestimate their risk of being victims of crime (this has a lot to

do with bad journalism). And it's true that, compared to many other parts of the world, Norwich is a very

safe place. But maybe if we were more realistic about how much crime is not reported these days, we would

not be so complacent about just how safe (or not) our streets and citizens are. There is a lot of crime and anti-social-behaviour